


Prayer

by Jenwryn



Category: Death Note
Genre: Angst, M/M, Podfic Available, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-01
Updated: 2008-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:03:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the shadows of a nightmare that wake him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prayer

**Author's Note:**

> I feel the possibly bizarre need to inform the world that I'm not actually Catholic. I did regularly attend weekly mass for five or six months when I lived in Italy, for what it's worth, but the only time I "turn Catholic" is when I'm in Germany (it's a long story, you probably don't want to hear it). I'm just putting that out there. Either way, the apparent Catholicism of Mello fascinates the hell out of me (bad word choice), even if I did read that he doesn't have a crucifix in the anime... Humph.
> 
> Beta'd by the marvellous Sabriel.
> 
> There is a podfic version available [here](http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/prayer), at Jinjurly's Archive.
> 
> [New A/N: This story has been illustrated the very talented Zeda, and published in the not-for-profit [International Death Note Anthology](http://yesterdayandtoday.org/40/). ♥;]

It’s the shadows of a nightmare that wake him. He lays, one hand wrapped, white-knuckled, in the trigger of the gun that he keeps beneath his pillow, and his breath is ragged, still caught somewhere south of his tonsils, as he gazes up at the ceiling. The flat is cheap and dirty, and the weird water-stains are visible even in the dull neon glow that insinuates itself, flickering, into the room through the cracked venetian blinds from the Chinese take-away across the street. Mello marvels at the power of the human subconscious as he makes the sign of the cross in the dark and reaches his gunless hand to his rosary. His fingers begin an almost absent count of the beads, skipping over both the Apostles’ Creed and the Our Fathers and launching straight into low-muttered Hail Marys. _(Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee__)__. _Mello marvels because he can’t even remember the nightmare and yet the terror of it, the clinging, creeping fear of it, clutches at his lungs with the death grip of an iron gauntlet. He has to focus his whole attention upon the numbing words, playing with them in the languages he knows, _(Gegrüßet seist Du Maria, voll der Gnade. Der Herr ist mit Dir)_, just to keep the panic from rising up in a physical lump. The fact that glass-shards of religious guilt have decided to join the fear in the game of choking him doesn’t make it any easier – Mello tells himself that God gave up on him long ago, but at least with Mary there might be a chance, _(Ave, o Maria, piena di grazia, il Signore è con te),__al_though even she hasn’t done a thing in his favour since he was fifteen. Either way, he declares it’s a mental exercise, rather than an act of faith, though he can’t be one-hundred percent sure that that’s not a lie.

Slowly, slowly, Mello disconnects his knuckles from the gun, reaches his now free hand out across the narrow sea of mostly-clean-but-irrepressibly-stained sheets and wraps his fingers tightly around Matt’s arm.

Not alone.

He lets go of his rosary and allows himself to breathe. The not-quite-boy, not-quite-man beside him mumbles something without waking (one night, Matt had recited codes for half an hour until the edge of Mello’s amusement had frayed and he’d been forced to kiss the red-head awake) and Mello reaches both hands out through the nebulous lime-stained darkness towards him. He opens his eyes, and closes his eyes, and opens them again. His hands have found Matt’s wrists and he rubs his thumbs over the slender bones beneath his grasp; rounded and breakable as newborn sparrows.

In his chest, Mello’s heart flutters bird-like, too, with the lingering pressure of the nightmare’s panic. He moves closer to Matt, disregarding the space between them with the casual contempt of one who habitually feels life through touch as well as intellect. He shifts over, making the bed creak and licked-clean chocolate wrappers crinkle, and gets his hair entangled in the earphones of an iPod that Matt must have been listening to before he fell asleep. Mello squints at the white cord in the green light, disentangles himself impatiently and shoves it between the pillows before moving closer still.

Mello dislikes nightmares with an intensity bordering on the irrational. He dislikes the purplish bruises they leave upon his psyche like love bites from a succubus. He dislikes the way they linger around him; the way they colour the world more sinister than it even is.

And he _despises_ what they reduce him to.

Mello presses his body in close against Matt’s lean form, counts the boy-man’s ribs, strokes his face in the blinking gleam.

“Matt,” he whispers.

Matt doesn’t open his eyes but he parts his lips, leans his face into Mello’s touch, and mumbles, “Bad dream?”

Mello doesn’t answer in words, just presses closer, needy and greedy and loathing his own fear, until Matt wakes enough to smooth his fingers through Mello’s hair. The redhead yawns and trails a hand along Mello’s backbone and curls it at the blond’s slender hips, wraps a leg around Mello’s thigh and drags him in closer, rubbing his own body sleepily, almost somnambulantly, against Mello’s.

Mello arches his hips and _needs_. Needs Matt, needs Matt’s warmth, needs Matt’s help to stave off the darkness, needs Matt’s very existence.

“Matt,” he whispers again, more insistently now.

Matt still hasn’t opened those eyes of his, but the yawning has stopped and he murmurs something about nightmares again, breath hot at Mello’s neck. Their bodies melt and mould, pressing, aching, consuming each other quiet touch by quiet touch, because even half-asleep Matt knows what Mello needs, even if Mello would never admit it. Matt knows even better than Mello does, in fact, because, while the boss of men and Mafia might think it’s all about the sex, Matt knows different.

Because Matt, as girlish and as clichéd as it might sound, understands about love.

And it’s love that he gives, in the touch of his hands and the slow, hungry press of his body, in the glint of his dark lashes in the green glow. Love amongst the sex, as they tremble together between the sheets and chocolate wrappers, neon light blinking over sinuous lengths of bared skin and dancing across Mello’s rosary, backs arched and Mello chanting, “Matt, Matt, Matt,” familiar prayer to the only soul who’s ever answered his supplications.


End file.
